‘Give-’em-Hell Harry’ simply ‘grandpa’ to Oak Ridge speaker

Monday

Apr 1, 2013 at 7:48 PMApr 1, 2013 at 7:54 PM

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States. And he and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president, are the two U.S. presidents most linked to “the Secret City” of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project.

by Beverly Majors

Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States. And he and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd president, are the two U.S. presidents most linked to “the Secret City” of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project.

However, to Clifton Truman Daniel — guest speaker at a special Thursday night event hosted by the Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation Association at the New Hope Center — “Give-’em-Hell Harry” was simply known as “grandpa.”

The Buck Stops Here

The eldest of four sons to Margaret Truman, the only child of Harry and Bess Truman, and Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr., a former reporter (and later editor) of the New York Times, Clifton Truman Daniel has served as the director of public relations and publications for the Harry S. Truman College in Chicago, Ill.

Daniel spent several days last week visiting Oak Ridge and gathering information for a book he’s writing about the August 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Daniel said he wanted “to honor both sides,” and initially he thought only about the Japanese victims and the people who made the decision to drop the weapons during World War II.

But while doing that research, Daniel learned of “another” side — the side that started it all — The Manhattan Project. Daniel came to Oak Ridge to talk to the residents who still live here and were part of the research and development effort that produced the first atomic bombs that helped end the war.

Of Daniel’s week-long visit to the Oak Ridge community, Y-12 Historian D. Ray Smith remarked: “We have opened up his head this week and poured it in.”

Smith said Daniel spent three hours with city historian Bill Wilcox, visited the Graphite Reactor, and saw the Beta 3 calutrons.

“He was at the place where the material was separated,” Smith said of Beta 3.

A calutron is a mass spectrometer used for separating the isotopes of uranium — which played a key role at the Y-12 electromagnetic isotope separation plant during the war and provided much of the uranium used for the “Little Boy” nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima.

On April 12, 1945, Harry Truman became president. And on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima and “Fat Man,” the second of the U.S.’ two nuclear weapons, was dropped on Nagasaki.

“He (President Truman) ordered the atomic bombs to be dropped,” D. Ray Smith recalled. However, young Clifton Daniel, Clifton Daniel himself said, didn’t even know his grandpa was president until he was 6 years old.

If You Can’t Stand

The Heat …

Daniel told several stories about his famous grandfather, saying he and his brother learned at an early age to either give Truman “a great deal of respect or avoid him entirely.”

“We discovered he wanted an educated grandchild … but also a tough grandchild,” said Daniel, telling about his grandfather trying to expose his grandkids to the Greek historian and Athenian general Thucydides, as well as about a hobby horse he fell off of when he rocked it too fast.

About learning the significance of who his own grandfather was historically, “I found out the hard way in the first grade,” Daniel said, after another child asked him if his granddad had been president.

Daniel answered, “I don’t know, but I’ll ask my Mom.”

And he did.

But when he asked, “Mom, did you know Grandpa Truman was president?” his mother reportedly told him: “Any little boy’s grandfather can be president; don’t let it go to your head.”

Daniel said it wasn’t until later, when he and his family had been in Washington, D.C., for President Johnson’s inauguration and were rushing to catch a train, that the station attendant told his father not to worry because “the White House called” and Johnson had stopped the train.

Daniel said that was when he began to realize the power of the presidency and “my head swelled.”

He also told the story of Lady Bird Johnson’s “canary yellow dressing gown worn over a canary yellow nightgown and canary yellow slippers,” when his family met her and LBJ in the White House during that visit — and how the president grabbed up stationery, pens and other items from his desk to give to him and his brother.

Among the items were LBJ matches that Lady Bird scolded the president about giving to children.

Daniel said many years later he was speaking in Texas and telling the story about Lady Bird’s yellow night gown. And “she was sitting right there,” he said.

Later, during a dinner, he said Lady Bird held out her hand to him and announced she had a small token for him.

“She dropped in my hand two books of LBJ Ranch matches!” he said.

‘America was NOT

built on fear’

Daniel also talked about “Truman the grandfather” after he left office. He said his grandpa “didn’t want the job” to begin with, but President Roosevelt, Truman’s predecessor, pushed it.

“He said the highest job in the land was the American citizen,” Daniel recalled.

When the media asked Truman about leaving office, he told them simply, “I’ve done my job and I’m going home,” his grandson said.

Daniel said Truman received no pension when he left office in January 1953. It wasn’t until 1958 that the Former Presidents Act was passed by Congress to provide several lifetime benefits to former U.S. presidents.

“He got on a train and went home,” Daniel said of this grandfather’s departure. “About 2,000 people saw him off.”

Another funny story about the president was when Bess Truman wanted the former president to mow the lawn — something he hated doing, according to Daniel.

“You’re not the president anymore, you’ve got to mow the grass,” Daniel said his grandmother told her husband. She nagged and nagged, he said, until Truman did it.

“But on a Sunday morning,” said Daniel, “my grandmother about died.”

She was embarrassed that the neighbors saw the ex-president mowing his lawn while they were going to church. Apparently it was bad enough that they hadn’t gone to services, but now the president was mowing on a Sunday.

“She told him, ‘Don’t you ever do that again,’ to which he replied, ‘OK,’” Daniel said.

‘I AM that S.O.B.’

Daniel said Truman only received Secret Service protection after the assassination of President Kennedy. However, prior to that, the ex-president was “very accessible.”

For example, after a man visited the Trumans’ home one day to use their telephone after his car broke down, the man reportedly got half way to his vehicle when he turned and remarked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look a lot like that S.O.B. Harry Truman.”

To which Daniel’s “grandpa” answered: “I AM that S.O.B.”

Following his talk, Daniel fielded several questions — many about his grandfather’s personal life, his faith, his love affair with Bess, and about his support of the desegregation of the military.

One question came from a man who said he voted for Truman and another who said her grandfather and Truman were friends.

He said President Roosevelt kept “things close to the vest,” and noted that Truman didn’t even find out about the atomic bomb until the first day of his presidency. Daniel recalled Truman saying a “light went off” because he had earlier questioned why so much funding was going to a place in Tennessee that didn’t even exist — the Secret City of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

“This has been wonderful,” Daniel said about his days-long visit to Oak Ridge.

“You have a wonderful story to tell, and you tell it beautifully.”

Beverly Majors can be contacted at (865) 220-5514.

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